A major deficiency of inspection systems and methods for, but not limited to, medical inspection such as phonocardiography, auscultation and ultrasound imaging and other non-acoustical medical inspection techniques; industrial non-destructive inspections such as passive acoustical emission (including ultrasound emission), active ultrasound inspection techniques and other non-acoustical inspection techniques, is that multiple independent devices must be utilized requiring multiple highly experienced operators skilled in the use and interpretation of inspection data obtained from these different devices. For example, medical phonocardiography, auscultation and ultrasound imaging, as well as industrial acoustical emission and ultrasound testing of industrial objects utilize devices that operate in a variety of different frequency domains ranging from infrasound (0.1 Hz-20 Hz), audible (20 Hz-20 kHz) and ultrasound (20 kHz up to many MHz). Each device operating in their own respective frequency range provides select acoustical data to a highly skilled operator with the trained ability to interpret the acoustical data based upon unique acoustical signatures characteristic of conditions being diagnosed for a particular application within a particular frequency range. Effective acoustical inspection and diagnosis of conditions therefore requires multiple devices and multiple highly trained operators which adds expense and complexity to the overall inspection process. This problem is compounded with the inclusion of additional data collected from other non-acoustical devices and systems including, but not limited to electrocardiography (EKG), computed-tomography (CT), single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), electromagnetic testing (ET), magnetic particle inspection (MT or MPI), magnetic flux leakage testing (MFL), liquid penetrant, radiographic (x-ray and gamma ray), eddy-current testing, low coherence interferometry, and combinations thereof (i.e., multi-modality inspection data) requiring additional experts skilled in the integrated, multi-data diagnosis of medical patients and industrial objects.
An attempt to simplify acoustical inspection involving the combination of audible and ultrasound systems into a single device is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 8,764,660, “Methods and Apparatus for Combined Audible and Ultrasonic Inspection of Objects, Including Patients” incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. However, this referenced disclosure only describes an apparatus that is in essence two independent acoustical devices packaged within the same housing; and although they can operate simultaneously, the acoustical data from these two devices are independently displayed with analysis and interpretation performed “manually” by the operator, and only as effective as the operator's skill and training in the analysis and interpretation of independent acoustical data sets collected from different acoustical collection modalities. The collected acoustical data is therefore “fused” organically based upon the operator's data interpretation skills and not by computational data fusion processing performed within the device through mathematical algorithms and digital techniques. Data fusion through digital processing of different data sets brings together all data and attributes into a single view; and generates new metadata that provides a far more complete and informative set of inspection data that is representative of the medical patient or industrial object (e.g., “A Review of Data Fusion Techniques”; U.S. Pat. No. 5,490,516, “Method and System to Enhance Medical Signals for Real-Time Analysis and High-Resolution Display”; U.S. Pat. No. 8,494,829, “Sensor Fusion and Probabilistic Parameter Estimation Method and Apparatus”; all incorporated herein by reference in their entirety). The final analysis of the fused data, however, is still performed manually by operators who must be highly trained in order to properly interpret the result and generate an accurate diagnosis. There have been other disclosures related to using various data correlation techniques that are designed to compare collected data with a database of known conditions thereby assisting relatively inexperienced operators with proper interpretation of the data (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,218,969, “Intelligent Stethoscope”; U.S. Pat. No. 8,892,196, Device and Method for Screening Congenital Heart Disease“; U.S. Pat. No. 5,025,809, Recording, Digital Stethoscope for Identifying PCG Signatures”; USPTO Publication #20120289849, “Signal Processing Apparatus and Method for Phonocardiogram Signal”; USPTO Publication #20050010098, “Method and Apparatus for Knowledge Based Diagnostic Imaging”, all incorporated herein by reference in their entirety); however, these systems and methods can lead to multiple false negative diagnostic results since these systems and methods are based primarily upon rule-based models and probabilistic algorithms, all of which break down when data patterns fall outside of known signature patterns contained within a pre-programmed data base of possible conditions being diagnosed.
Therefore, there is a need for medical and industrial inspection systems and methods to be more fully integrated across a range of acoustical frequencies from the sub-audible through the ultrasound range of frequencies, with the ability to fuse all of the collected acoustical data with other provided non-acoustical inspection data resulting in the generation of new metadata which can then be interpreted and diagnosed by cognitive artificial intelligence techniques against known inspection signatures characterizing conditions being diagnosed with the ability to also anticipate abnormal conditions that fall outside known signature patterns; and communicate the integrated inspection results to an operator for the purpose of analyzing, interpreting and managing the overall inspection process. This system and method enables less skilled operators with a cognitive tool that emulates a diagnosis performed by multiple highly trained operators skilled in data interpretation from multiple inspection devices, thereby lowering costs, simplifying the initial inspection and diagnosis for medical patients and industrial objects and minimizing the possibility of initial false negative and false positive interpretations.